Background
Fakenham is a market town with a population of just under 8,000 in rural Norfolk. The town has a relatively buoyant economy with little unemployment and this part of East Anglia has seen a considerable increase in tourism and leisure activities as disposable income has grown. The Fakenham Garden Centre occupies a site of some 1½ acres outside the town. It is a family-run business having been purchased in 1985 by the current Managing Director, Gordon Turner, who is one of the three family Directors.
The case study considers how the skills requirements of staff are met, and their links with the day to day running of the business.
The business challenge
The core activity of Fakenham Garden Centre, and any other garden centre, is the sale and supply of plants and associated products including composts, weed killer and fertilisers. There has been a growing interest in gardening in recent years which in part reflects the fashionable ‘Friday night television programmes’. In addition, as Gordon Turner put it “we don’t get so many cold winters, so people are more adventurous.” Similar factors have led to an interest in other leisure pursuits. However gardening is a seasonal activity and even after diversification of activities discussed below, sales can very from £25,000 on a warm spring or summer bank holiday Saturday to as little as a fifth of that amount on a dismal day in winter.
The Fakenham Garden Centre is some twenty miles from the nearest city and from any other large centres of population so in Gordon Turner’s words, “Everybody in the locality must be regarded as our potential customer.” The Garden Centre is open seven days and sixty hours a week. It offers a wide and increasing range of products including: outdoor furniture; clothing and boots; and pets (especially fish) and pet food as well as all the material to create and maintain a garden. In addition the Centre has a large and increasing range of gifts including books. The overall volume of sales places it in the medium range for garden centres, despite its limited site which makes it a physically small centre. The provision of adequate car-parking is, of course, crucial to the business.
Given this range of products, the Fakenham Garden Centre faces a wide range of competitors. As well as two similar specialist garden centres within ten miles of the town, all the major supermarkets and do-it-yourself chains sell garden furniture and other leisure products. A new and growing source of competition is plants purchased from specialist growers through the internet.
Staffing and skills
In total some 35 staff are employed at the Centre. There are three family Directors, ten supervisors and four office staff, one of whom is responsible for point of sales material. All the Directors and supervisors play an active role in meeting and serving customers – indeed only the three office staff work behind desks. The remainder of the staff are designated as assistants and undertake selling, advice and the loading and delivery of materials. A number of these staff work part-time.
According to Gordon Turner, the most important requirement is a positive attitude towards customers:
“As long as they have a decent personality we can do the rest. However, in a people-facing industry the last thing the customer wants is to be told about other people’s troubles”.
At one stage a notice in the staff area made the point simply: "Customers are our business, not an intrusion.”
Despite this strong requirement for what is becoming known as “emotional resilience”, finding suitable staff is not seen as a major problem. Attrition rates are low and some staff have been employed since the purchase in 1985, and the Centre receives a steady flow of unsolicited CV’s particularly from young people interested in part-time or temporary work.
According to Gordon Turner where recruitment can be more difficult is when there are vacancies at supervision/management level. This mirrors findings from the CIPD’s latest Recruitment, Retention and Turnover survey that show 45% of organisations struggled to fill managerial and professional posts. The right balance of skills and a willingness to get involved in hands-on with the customers is needed. A particular challenge will arise in restructuring management responsibilities and adding to the team when Gordon Turner decides to take retirement.
The role of training
Given the nature of the business and the repeated emphasis on the customer interface there is considerable emphasis on appropriate behaviour. The Directors are involved with day-to-day work – at the interview time Gordon Turner was taking fork-lift palettes of waste to the refuse lorry before we withdrew to an office for the discussion. Hence any failure in customer service skills is recognised and treated as a day-to-day performance issue. The hands-on management style is a by-product of the Directors’ presence on the shop-floor and involvement in all aspects of the business.
However, if the acquisition of customer skills is taken as an ongoing process other skills need a more formal intervention. One important area is the need to meet a range of regulatory requirements – training to meet legislation. This is delivered by local specialists and can often take the form of two to three hours sessions for a number of staff. Subject areas would include: fire extinguisher training, health and safety, safe lifting and handling, and first aid training. Product knowledge is mainly acquired by the individual and shared with others, but suppliers are very willing to contribute to similar short modular training sessions.
The Fakenham Garden Centre has attained Investors in People (IiP) status and perhaps half a dozen staff have acquired NVQs. Here Gordon Turner expresses a view that IiP was of a considerable assistance in getting our structure right, whereas NVQs are insufficiently demanding “there could be more content.” The Garden Centre has had an initial visit from ‘Train to Gain’ and is awaiting detailed proposals on how this could be taken forward.
Conclusion
It is evident that the whole business approach is based on a very close customer contact, and that Gordon Turner works closely with all staff. The key customer contact skills are all evident to him in their presence (or sometimes absence). Training in this area is not a priority. There is on-going training taking place to meet the requirements of employee legislation. More generally knowledge and skills are seen in terms of what is required to serve the immediate needs of the customer and hence achieve success in a very competitive and transparent localised market. There is a positive attitude towards investment in skills, but no compelling or urgent requirement for a different approach to the current initiatives.